Into the Wave
What do I do?
I could hide, same as last time. If I did, the wave would pass me by and I'd walk out of this in one piece.
But.
Do I really have to look the other way again?
It wasn't as if I'd enjoyed letting it go the last time. I simply hadn't had a choice. Standing in front of a wave that size, I'd been one powerless human being, and silence was the only thing left to me.
But not now.
I had a unique skill of my own. Puppetry — the very thing I'd worn my own mouth out calling a cheat, over and over. If I kept my mouth shut again even with that in my hands, what was any of it for? I'd clawed my way into the Tower to keep Sia alive. Did that give me the right to shut my eyes so easily when someone else was about to die?
Better that than some contradictory excuse.
The window rattled open. I hauled a commercial sack of flour out of the subspace backpack, sheared the top off with scissors, and shouted.
"Run this way!!"
The hunter's head snapped up at my voice, and he cut straight toward me.
Get outside. Draw them off.
I gave the order and took a swallow of coffee. The instant the hunter's sprint lined up with the window, I upended the sack and shook it out into the open air.
A white cascade poured down like a waterfall and burst apart the moment it struck the ground, blooming out in every direction. I caught the rope I'd set in advance and threw myself out of the building after it.
My boots hit. The hunter was already on top of me. I seized his arm and ran.
Flour dust had turned the air to milk. It must have landed clean, because nothing had latched onto us yet.
It didn't last. The cloud hiding us was a pathetic little patch next to the wave.
"Kwaaaah!"
"Krururuk!"
Arms shot in from both sides at once. There was no time to clear them. Hesitate for even a second and dozens of sprinters would be on our heels.
Crack—! The hand reaching for my arm was smashed aside by Puppet 1.
Slash—! Puppet 3 launched the one lunging in for a tackle and sent it flying.
Then, at once, a stutter of clicks — flashlights snapping on as Puppet 1 drew the horde after the light.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
The thunder of enormous footsteps yanked my head around. The statue had kicked the mats off its shoes and was coming after us, ready to take the aggro in our place. It didn't stop there. Puppet 1 hit the cassette player, and a tinny tune spilled into the street.
"Kwaaaah!!"
"Kyahaaaah!"
"Krurururuk!"
The pack convulsed and crashed down on Puppet 1. In a blink it was buried, gone from sight. Even so, the ones that peeled away were only a scrap of the greater wave.
The statue, which had kept pace at my side, stopped dead. Then, like an idol mid-performance, it flung its cape wide in one clean, gorgeous motion.
Light exploded around it. Puppets 2, 3, and 4 had their flashlights trained on the thing, and the beams shattered into glittering reflections. The zombies that had been dogging my back threw themselves at it body and soul, shrieking like diehard fans.
"Kuwaaaah!!"
"Kworuruk!"
I watched its end while I ran. As if it already knew resistance was pointless, it held the pose to the last and shot me a thumbs-up. Puppets 2, 3, and 4 clung on until the very end, grabbing and dragging at anything they could reach, trying to stop even one more — joints shattering, and still they didn't let go. Between the surging bodies, only the flashlight beams jerked and swung.
Thud—!
Damn it!
I'd been watching them die, and I missed the sprinter coming in from the side. It hit the hunter like a battering ram.
"Ghk—!"
He went limp at once, out cold.
Oh, you have got to be kidding me!
There wasn't even time to panic. I stamped the thing's skull in, hauled the hunter up by the shoulder, dragged him a few staggering steps, and swung him onto my back.
The puppets had bought me distance. There was still some left. The sprinters were the problem.
Son of a— where the hell did he drag a pack of sprinters in from?!
It takes two minutes for one of them to turn into a sprinter. He must have been running from somewhere else and washed up here.
At this rate they're going to catch us!
I needed another way. A way...
Wait. What if—?
The thought struck like a spark. A person? A person's a puppet too, isn't he? No — he is the human form itself.
The question was whether granting a will through Puppetry would leave him intact. That blue light wrapped a mannequin when it took hold. If the same light carved through this hunter's joints—
That is not the problem right now.
He was about to die either way.
Grant Will.
Blue light burst from my back, hummed once, deep and low — and settled faster than it ever had on any puppet.
Damn it. Did it fail?
Then the hunter slid down off my back and started to run.
What?
His eyes were shut. He was running anyway.
He can run while he's out cold?
Fine by me. My hands were free. I yanked another flour sack from the subspace backpack, shook what was left of it into the faces of the things behind us, and dove into the base building. I jammed the entrance with the obstacles I'd staged, and while the zombies hammered at them I caught the rope on the far window and dropped.
Soft landing. Another. I took the escape route I'd already cleared, slipped into the alley, and tucked myself through the small inner entrance without a sound.
Outside, the madness was still in full swing — pounding, splintering, a long groan of metal giving way, then a crash. I squeezed my eyes shut in the middle of it and held my breath.
They were only puppets. Even so, the scene kept coming back. Puppets throwing themselves at anything if it meant saving me. I told myself it was a mercy they weren't people, and still something ached, deep in my chest, and kept on filling.
They were just following orders.
Maybe this useless sentiment was only mine because I was human. Puppets wouldn't feel any of it. For now I just had to wait until the frenzy burned itself out. After that, I'd see them again.
Wait.
How had I been able to grant a new will at all?
Don't tell me it overwrote one of them. If it did, one of the puppets just got cut loose—!
I checked the skill.
◈ Grants a will to any target that possesses a human form.
◈ A target granted a will moves independently and carries out the caster's commands.
◈ Units currently available to deploy: 0
◈ Units currently in operation: 7
◈ A puppet may use the general skills possessed by the caster.
◈ Damaged or missing parts of a puppet may be restored. (Restoration cooldown per unit: 24 hours)
◈ A puppet may acquire skills on its own.
◈ The caster may bestow their own Quirks upon a puppet, or reclaim Quirks applied to a puppet.
So that's why. Puppetry had leveled.
Nothing had been cut loose, thank God. Taking down a stage-two zombie at the first-floor police station, then looting the second-floor shopping arcade and holding the wave off — between all of that, the experience must have tipped over.
But the options? Hold on...
I could pass Quirks back and forth with a puppet?
Quirks came in three kinds: positive, negative, and complex. Negative and complex ones had already driven more hunters into retirement than anyone could count. The Tower of Calamity had existed for a single month. That was all it had taken.
Sure, a hunter could live well enough off the goods hauled out of the Tower. The problem was that the cash recovery rate still fell miserably short of the disaster-prevention standard. And if the veterans started retiring on top of that — could we really pull back cash on the scale of a year's tax revenue?
Not a chance.
That was exactly what the team lead had been groaning about.
But if I could dump a negative Quirk onto a puppet?
A hunter who'd already walked away could come back. The puppet would eat the penalty, of course.
So I pile the whole thing onto one puppet and sever the link. Done!
Offload it onto some zombie and cut the connection, and nobody takes the penalty at all.
And more than that—
With this, I can erase Sia's Vivid Presence Quirk!!
The black interior of the building seemed to flare bright. I wanted to shout eureka.
Thank you!
The heart of it was whether Puppetry worked on a person. If it hadn't been this man, I never would have thought to test it. Get it wrong and the cost would be enormous. I'd used it only because I was trying to keep him alive, and it had turned into something this good.
One test was still left, though.
Please let him be all right.
If Puppetry had cracked his personality, or stripped his sense of self, that would be a far worse problem than a broken body.
Right — I was just sitting here looking at it.
If I used Restore, his body would come back together. Maybe he'd wake up. I'd been so tangled in one thought chasing the next that I hadn't even reached for it.
Restore.
The skill took hold.
"Nngh... mm..."
"You with me?"
"Uh— huh? Who—? Oh! You're the one who helped me earlier?"
"Yeah."
He pushed himself up.
"Thank you. Truly, thank you for saving me!!"
He folded into a full bow before I could stop him. I let it go. This wasn't the moment to play humble — my own life had been on the line too. A thank-you was fine. I'd have hit the floor first if it had been me.
"Anything feel wrong?"
"Huh? Oh— yes! I'm all right. I'm all right, but..."
He hesitated.
"Something does feel a little strange."
"Strange how?"
"The way I remember it... a sprinter hit me in the head. Taking a blow like that and coming out this intact — doesn't that seem odd to you?"
That was Restore. No reason to say so here.
"And I think there were others who helped pull me out. Those people..."
I had no interest in advertising the Puppetry skill. How to talk around it?
"We split up. They're fine too, so don't worry."
"Oh! That's a relief, then."
He'd been too terrified at the time to read the situation properly. He'd have no choice but to take me at my word.
"Aigoo. How am I ever supposed to repay a debt like this?"
Something flickered into his hand and vanished again.
A subspace bag?
Looking closer, his gear was seriously good.
A veteran, then.
And a man like that had been run down hard enough to drag a whole wave in behind him. What in the world had happened to him?
"Would you at least take this?"
"This?"
He held out a pouch about the size of a fist. I looked inside.
Jewelry?
It was packed full of precious metal.